"What’s that?” gasped Bentham.
They paused, intent. Evidently, something had happened—an accident, maybe. They could hear a subdued, distant roar, in which were mingled the tooting of motors, the clanging of bells, the bellowing of whistles, and the cries and yells of excited humanity. A multitude of black shadows rushed by. The bartender threw open the window. The avenue was filled with a hurrying crowd—all gazing skyward.
"Hooray!” yelled the crowd. "Hooray! Hooker’s back! Hooray!”
Tassifer and Judson looked at one another mutely. Suddenly, the bartender leaped out the window and joined the mob. The whole city was in the streets.
"Come on, Judson!” cried Bentham. "If there’s anything doing, let’s be on the wagon!” And he climbed upon the sill and leaped after the bartender.
Judson hesitated, emptied his glass, and followed. Over in the west, across the park, a great cloud of smoke and dust was rising against the crimson sky.
"What’s happened?” asked the now thoroughly sober Judson of a man who was hurrying by.
"Don’t know," panted the other. "People say comet’s struck us!"
"Comet Nothin’!" shouted a policeman. "It’s Hooker’s fly-ing machine!"
Judson grabbed Tassifer by the arm, and they hastened cheer-fully along with the crowd.
IV
At the moment her husband thus undignifiedly surrendered to mob psychology, Mrs. Bentham T. Tassifer was taking her Saturday-afternoon bath—thus leaving the tub free for Bentham before going to bed. She had closed the windows, which fact, coupled with the noise of her puffings and splashings, had prevented her from hearing the demonstration going on in the street below. She was just reaching for her towel when she heard the door-bell ring and hurried footsteps upon the stairs.
"Is that you, Bentham?" she shrilled.
"No; it’s me—Rhoda!" came back the voice of her niece.
"Where on earth have you been?" cried her aunt. "You scared us almost to death!"
"Oh, flying around!" answered Rhoda. "I want my tooth-powder and nail-brush."
"What are you going to do now?" shouted Mrs. Tassifer, through the door.
"I'm going to get married," replied Rhoda. "Please hand me my things."
There were but two passengers to come down the gangplank when the Washington boat docked the next morning at Old Point Comfort. Trade had been, in fact, very light for several weeks, and the hotels had been practically closed owing to the defection of the colored help, who in a frenzy of religious fervor, had abandoned their jobs to prepare, by prayer and chanting, for the day of Judgment.
Carrying their grips, Bennie and Rhoda walked along the wooden pier and entered a hotel. A decrepit clerk assigned them rooms and handed Bennie a pen freshly dipped in ink. With his hand poised above the blank page of the register, our hero hesitated. They had come there to avoid the pestering crowds, the
. Should he sign as was befitting—"Professor and Mrs. Benjamin Hooker, Washington, D.C."? In that case, even that old dormouse of a hotel-clerk would recognize his identity and the hotel would swarm with interviewers. Yet—did he dare? He had only been married a few hours. He glanced apprehensively at Rhoda, who was examining some needlework in a showcase. Then he resolutely gripped the pen and scrawled, B. Hooker and wife, Camb. Mass.
All that day, the two star-voyagers wandered over the white beach, drinking in the odoriferous breath of the coming spring and
talking over their experiences of the past seventy-two hours.
And, in the evening, they sat on the sand and watched the sea darken and caught the first glint of the moon’s edge as it pushed up over the horizon. They neither saw the throng of reporters who poured off the afternoon train nor suspected that they were the marked-down quarry of a pack of ravenous wolves.
In ignorance of what was in store for them, Bennie and Rhoda strolled further and further up the beach, away from the hotel. The moon came up round and full, smiling like an old and familiar friend. The breeze had died away, and the silver-edged waves lapped the soft sand gently at their feet as they threw themselves at full-length under some stray pines and gazed up through the branches at the blue arch with its thousands of twin-kling lights.
"I like them so much better that way!" she murmured. "If they don’t wink at you, it seems so unfriendly!"
"It was awful up there!" he assented.
The moon swam higher and higher, turning the beach into a white snow-drift, along which, save for that of the pines under which they lay, no shadow could be seen for miles. Toward this single possible hiding-place moved Diggs, a newspaper reporter from New York. The crunch of his steps made them sit up hurriedly.
"Sh! Somebody’s coming!" he whispered.
They were motionless—two hunted creatures—scarcely breathing, in a black island surrounded by a deluge of moonlight.
But Diggs had spied them. Fifty feet away, he paused and lit a warning cigarette. Then he walked down to the water’s edge, gazed pensively at the moon and remarked,
"I say, Professor Hooker?"
"It’s no use," growled Bennie; "he’s got us! Hello!" he answered.
The reporter coughed and came slowly toward the patch of shadow.
"Excuse me," he remarked briskly; "but you understand there’s a whale of a story in all this, and it’s up to me to get it? You can’t blow up a meteor and knock the solar system topsyturvy and get away without even being interviewed, you know. Sorry—but it isn’t done. What do you suppose they would do to me? And then there’s Mrs. Hooker, you see: If it hadn't been for Mrs. Tassifer—"
Rhoda suddenly spoke up.
"What has she said?" she demanded.
"Oh, she gave us the romance stuff," he answered. "Look here, now: It’s ten o’clock, and I’ve got to ’phone this to New
York in time for the early edition. Do you mind my asking just a few questions?"
"But I haven’t anything to say," expostulated Professor Hooker.
"Just listen to the man!" groaned Diggs* "Let me ask you:
Is this story about landing on the moon perfectly straight?"
Rhoda pointed up through the trees to the great yellow circle
of the lunar orb.
"Do you see that bright spot with the shadow on the left-hand
side of it?"
"Sure," answered Diggs.
"Well," she continued, "I was standing right there less than
thirty-six hours ago."
"Great stuff!" Diggs exclaimed. "But how could you prove
it? What evidence have you got?"
"I've got plenty of photographs," she answered. "Dozens of
them—of the moon, of the crescent earth—"
"Beg pardon! Of the—what?"
"The crescent earth," she explained, "at about the first quarter. I suppose the phrase seems a little strange.
"Oh—like the moon. I get you," he nodded. "But pictures might be faked."
"These weren’t," she retorted wearily.
"Of course not," he agreed. "But they’re open to attack." "I suppose so," she conceded. "But it doesn’t matter."
"Of course it matters!" he expostulated. "Now if you only, had something you got on the moon—brought away with you—that didn’t exist on earth—"
"People would just say it did” put in Bennie. "Who cares? We don’t!"
"Sure you don’t!" he answered sympathetically. "But it means a heap to me. Don’t you see what a scoop it would be for us to be the only paper to prove you’d been to the moon?"